


Sand

by story_monger



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Season/Series 11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 19:53:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7067743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/story_monger/pseuds/story_monger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel finds sand in the shower drain and the sink drain, pinging against the hardwood in the kitchen, under his fingernails when he runs his hand through his scalp, between his teeth and under his tongue and caked on several eyelashes. He blames their location at first, but he hasn’t stepped outside for four days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sand

**Author's Note:**

> A drabble that regards the part of canon where Castiel houses Lucifer and ignores everything else.

When Castiel walks, sand scrapes between his thighs; it scrapes against the frog-white skin of his inner arm; it scrapes through his tear ducts when he wakes up from formless, dreamless sleeps.

At first he blames their location.

A mountain. A lake. A rim of dull, inland beach. Stepping stairs of cabin resorts packed into the slope with aching wooden supports. The woman who runs the place called them because she’d been going half out of her mind with the strangeness of her daughter. Castiel could see limning light casting wrong shadows on the daughter’s face the moment she stepped out of the back room. The girl had smiled right at Castiel. Castiel had shuddered. Sam and Dean were able to expel the demon from the girl within a few days. It was practically a milk run, and Castiel was able to admire their clear-eyed calm while the girl screamed obscenities and puked violently across her paisley blue shirt.

Just like The Exorcist, Dean reported later when the mother and daughter couldn’t hear, and he seemed pleased.

They had been invited to stay in their cabin for as long as they liked, and they should have moved on, Castiel knew, but they had stayed. Castiel didn’t complain. He still doesn’t complain. But the sand gets everywhere.

Sam travels to the gray beach and watches the lake water flirt with the shore. Sometimes, from the window, Castiel can see him roll up his pants and wade into the lake. He bends to flick water onto the top of his head.

Dean paces among the cabin’s three rooms and flips through paperbacks left on the shelves for guests. Sometimes Castiel picks up the paperbacks after Dean leaves them on the table, and he reads several chapters before he suspects Dean didn’t read any of this, and then he slides it back into place on the shelves. He always leaves sand between the pages; it makes the paperbacks bulge subtly.

He finds sand in the shower drain and the sink drain, pinging against the hardwood in the kitchen, under his fingernails when he runs his hand through his scalp, between his teeth and under his tongue and caked on several eyelashes. He blames their location at first, but he hasn’t stepped outside for four days.

Sam and Dean are somewhere on the beach when Castiel sits beneath the sunlight of the front window and lifts his right hand in front of his face. He rubs his thumb against the pads of his fingers and watches sand fine as sugar spill into his lap and gather in the folds of his shirt. When the brothers return, Castiel asks if they can leave soon, please.

They go that evening. They move west, and Castiel doesn’t recognize the mistake until it’s too late and they’re speeding through red gold deserts with the earth’s bones rearing like ships through more sand than bears imagining.

Utah, Dean says, is a freaky kind of state, and there’s a reason no one but the Mormons wanted to stay here.

He looks at Castiel through the rearview mirror.

What do the folks upstairs think of Joseph Smith? he asks.

Castiel is too distracted by all the exposed earth to answer. He watches it scatter across the back seat, working into the seat’s trenches. The tips of his fingers have become uneven; he can see the sand crumbling from them in chunks.

Do you know how many grains of sand are on all the earth’s beaches? Sam had once asked. I read however many it is, the stars outnumber that.

They do, Castiel can tell Sam. And however many stars there are, I outnumber that.

They pull into a motel on the edge of Nevada. Castiel watches neon shout at them through the twilight while Sam picks up keys in the yellow-lit lobby. Castiel shifts and leans his elbows against the front seat. He holds out his hands with their crumbling fingers.

What do you think? he says.

Dean glances back. He looks to Castiel’s eyes first, then to his hands, back up.

What is it?

Castiel cannot answer.

Dean takes Castiel’s hand and kisses the remains of his knuckles. Castiel bows his head; his breath collides with the seat’s leather. Dean has a dusting of grains on his lips. Quartz nodules, miniscule silica fossils, the dreaming remains of mountains and volcanoes. Castiel reaches out and uses his thumb to brush the sand from Dean’s mouth; he can’t reach some that has snuck into the soft corners of his lips.

I’m sorry, Castiel says. That I wanted to leave so fast.

You don’t need to give any excuses, Cas. You need to go, we go. Stay, we stay.

These are Sam’s words, making a home in Dean’s mind and mouth. Sam was the one who said: Lucifer in your head means afterwards, having reign of the whole world isn’t enough to feel free again.

But they’re giving him the American highways. It’s pittance, and Castiel takes it.

Sam returns with the keys and they roll to their room at the end of a long row. Castiel crawls into Sam’s bed while Sam brushes his teeth in the bathroom. Dean watches from the other bed. He’s close enough Castiel can touch him if he reaches out.

You okay? Dean asks.

Castiel has sand gathering in the seam between his thigh and the sheet. He says yes. When Sam emerges from the bathroom and slides into the bed, Castiel curls into his body while sand crusts in his elbows and under his chin and in his crotch.

Do you remember asking me how many grains of sand are on all the beaches? he asks Sam.

Sam makes a small sound of amusement.

Do you actually have a number?

No, Castiel says. Something that big, it’s not a number anymore. It’s a formula. It’s a picture. It’s a whole being with a story.

Sam hums and sounds pleased with the answer. Castiel sleeps without dreaming, but he hears a faint hiss from a long way away like he’s standing in the midst of dunes.

He wakes up and looks down to where his hands nestle between his stomach and Sam’s. His wrists are connected to shambles of sandcastles after high tide. His exposed skin is covered in a second layer of grains. Castiel closes his eyes again.

When he showers several hours later, he watches the water make rivulets and deltas out of the sodden, brown sand he sheds. He keeps washing his hair, washing his hair, and the sand never slackens and he builds an entire topography between his feet. He finally emerges into the bathroom and hears a soft patter when sand tumbles from between his legs and under his arms. He pulls on clean clothes and can sense every place where his skin meets fabric by the grit and the rub. When he eats breakfast, the toast gouges miniscule trenches down his throat.

Keep going west, please, Castiel says when Dean asks where he wants to travel next. They go west. They escape west. Same difference. Castiel crouches in the back seat and thoughtfully dissolves.

They reach Oregon. Castiel asks to push right to the coast, but not a sandy coast, a rocky coast full of tumbled boulders. Sam and Dean are looking at each other a few feet away but Castiel can’t focus on them. His vision is blurring out from a cornea studded with debris. By that evening, when the Impala’s headlights paints over quiet tree trunks and a spindly path with ‘Beach Access’ posted beside it, Castiel’s lungs crackle and his throat catches on itself every time he swallows. He exits the car in quiet, deliberate movements. Sam and Dean wait; they remains in their seats and watch Castiel sway in front of the Impala’s nose, trying to find strength in dissolving legs full of shrapnel. He pushes himself forward. The Impala doors clack. Sam and Dean follow like a procession.

Picking his way down to the ocean is long and torturous. By the time Castiel feels cold water lick against his ankles, he wants to fall there and break apart in gentle clumps at the high point. But that would defeat the purpose. He sludges through three, four more steps. The water croons around his thighs, then his waist. The brothers are saying something but Castiel’s ears became clogged a long time ago. He pushes on, and now the bottom of his chin dips in and out of the foaming water. He stops, and he looks up, and he sees the stars. The entirety, the formula of them.

Splashing. They’re here beside him. Dean’s hands are grasping and frantic. Sam’s are slower and cautious. Castiel leans back into them and, for the first time, he’s not scraping in every corner of his body. He’s just floating apart so gently it’s tempting to smile.

Angels always liked the ocean, Castiel explains to them.

Neither answer; neither seem to know how.

We like the ocean, Castiel says, because it’s the one thing almost big enough.

He closes his eyes.

 


End file.
